Pope's Talk With Anglican Leader Appears to Stall

By CELESTINE BOHLEN

Published: December 6, 1996

ROME, Dec. 5—
As they prayed together this evening in a small chapel on one of Rome's hills, Pope John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, head of the world's Anglican community, tried hard to cast a harmonious glow over one of the most contentious dialogues in the Christian world.

Yet at the end of the Anglican leader's first official visit to the Vatican, there were new signs that the dialogue -- under way for more than three decades -- has stalled over the difficult and so far unreconcilable issue of the ordination of women as priests.

It has been more than four centuries since an English King chose to challenge the Pope's authority in part because he wanted to divorce one woman and marry another. And while the churches remain among the closest members of the Christian family, it is again an issue of women that has proved to be the wedge that divides them.

Women have been ordained priests in the American Episcopal Church since 1976 and in the Church of England since 1994, three years after Archbishop Carey assumed leadership of the Anglican Communion. But the Roman Catholic Church has vigorously and consistently refused to consider admitting women to the priesthood, arguing that in choosing only men to be His apostles, Jesus made a choice that the church is bound by doctrine to obey.

Talks on reconciling the churches began in the 1960's after the Second Vatican Council, and John Paul has declared Christian unity to be one of the major goals of his papacy. In 1982, he became the first Pope to visit Canterbury.

Faced with a clear division on an issue as central as the priesthood, the two churches -- which have come closer together on issues of doctrine, liturgy and other theological questions during long years of negotiations -- now appear to have agreed to disagree.

Both sides, however, took pains to reassure each other that even as talks go into what appear to be a timeout, relations can continue to improve.

''The path ahead may not be altogether clear to us, but we are here to recommit ourselves to following it,'' Pope John Paul II said this morning, as he greeted Archbishop Carey before a private meeting at the Vatican.

At a news conference this afternoon, Archbishop Carey said, ''The commitment to an ecumenical dialogue continues no matter how long it takes.'' He later joined the Pope at a vespers service at a small chapel at the Church of St. Gregory the Great, the site from which Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent to the British Isles in the sixth century.

At the news conference today, a leading member of the Anglican delegation accompanying Archbishop Carey on his three-day visit noted that the results of the latest round of Anglican-Roman Catholic talks would now be taken back to the respective congregations to be ''reviewed, absorbed and reflected upon within the life of the church.''

The ordination of women is one of several major issues that remain to be resolved as Anglicans and Roman Catholics consider their future relations. Another is the primacy of the papacy -- the supreme authority assumed by the head of the Roman Catholic church, which was at the heart of the break between Rome and the English church headed by King Henry VIII in 1534.

In his drive for greater Christian unity, Pope John Paul offered in a 1995 encylical on ecumenism known as ''Ut Unum Sint'' to review the role of the papacy, although he made clear that the Roman Pope's authority could never come into question.

But for the Anglican churches as for other Christian denominations, the supremacy of the papacy is itself an obstacle for further unity and for them, the case made by the Vatican against women in the priesthood is a case in point. Disagreements over who holds ultimate authority among Christians were apparent this week as the Pope, in discussing the ''difficulties'' that have clouded the Anglican-Roman Catholic relationship, emphasized the responsibility of his ''teaching office'' and urged his Anglican brethern to heed his ''motives and reasons.''

Archbishop Carey, who first met the Pope in an unofficial visit here in 1992, came to Rome this time with his wife, Eileen, who accompanied him today to an unscheduled lunch with the Pope at the Vatican. In the Roman Catholic Church, priests must still be celibate, although exceptions have been made with married Anglican priests who have converted and been ordained in the Roman Catholic Church.

Archbishop Carey said today that he and the Pope had discussed the possibility of a millennial meeting of Christian leaders but that the exact ''where and when'' still would have to be resolved. While acknowledging that there are still ''deep divisions in 'between the churches,'' he noted that ''huge strides'' have been made in the last 30 years. ''The commitment to go on fills me with hope,'' he said.

Photo: The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, met with Pope John Paul II yesterday in the Pope's study to discuss interfaith relations. (Reuters)